How TV finally returned to Afghanistan after 30 years of censorship

In the opening scene of the documentary film The
Network, journalist Ahmad Shafi describes watching a public
execution in Kabul during the Taliban regime: "That had become the
only entertainment in the city. There was nothing else… The country
had completely shut down so people didn't have access to
media."

Directed by Eva Orner, who produced the Academy Award-winning
documentary Taxi to the Dark Side, The
Network tells the story of TOLO TV, the first independent
television network created in Afghanistan to fill the media void
created by 30 years of war, repression and censorship. Since
businessman Saad Mohseni first launched TOLO TV in 2004, the
network has transformed from a nine-person operation to a staff of
900, filming and broadcasting everything from news reporting and
travel shows to singing
competitions and soap operas.

Orner spoke to Wired US about her experience making The
Network -- which was released this week via
video-on-demand -- and about how the rapid growth of technology and
media, particularly in urban areas like Kabul, have influenced many
young Afghans coming of age after the fall of the Taliban.

Wired: One of the things The Network impresses
on viewers is how rapidly the media landscape has changed in
Afghanistan since 2001. What was it like before?
Eva Orner: When Saad arrived there twelve years ago, there wasn't
really electricity; there was certainly no media. And they came in
with no knowledge -- they were lawyers, investment bankers. They
had to buy all the equipment and learn how to use everything, train
everybody to do everything. They had to build the TV towers, and
when the towers would break they'd have to climb up them with a
manual and fix them. The obstacles they had to overcome could be
their own film.

I was based in Kabul, which is the most progressive city in
Afghanistan. It's very young. The average age is 24… The changes
have been very fast there. When [TOLO] started no one had TVs. Now,
everyone's got a TV in their house. Facebook is huge there. They
don't have a lot of mobile Internet yet because it's so expensive
and they don't all have internet at home, so they'll come to work
an hour earlier and stay an hour later because they're Facebooking.
Some journalists have told me about being embedded with troops in
the middle of nowhere, and how some kid will come up to you and
want to Facebook friend you… Once you go out into the provinces,
though, the very high illiteracy rate kicks in; it's very poor and
very uneducated, but it's changing.

What kind of impact do you think television has had on
Afghanistan culturally?I think [TOLO TV] has really changed the country
enormously. They've educated people. They used to have a lot of
health shows on about how to look after your kids, how to wash your
hands before meals. Sesame Street had a huge
impact on literacy rates for adults and kids. Sesame
Street is [broadcast] all over the world, but this is a
place where adults can watch it to learn to read and write. They
had a show where doctors would travel around the country and meet
people with basic medical problems and show how to treat them. Now
they've also got stuff like soap operas. People love the soap
operas. They all talk about it. It's just like us. It's the same
thing. The boys like cop shows.

The film also highlights a heartbreaking advice show
where you see women -- who would otherwise never be able to speak
up without fear of reprisal -- calling in anonymously to say that
their husbands are abusing them horrifically. But even then there's
no help anyone can offer them.
It's heartbreaking. A woman calls in and says, my husband beats me.
He broke my hands. He's burning my daughter's legs badly. And the
response is not, "there is an ambulance and police on the way. You
will be safe". It's like, "try listening to him, and don't stoop to
his level". [One of the female TOLO producers] Marina [Zaffari]
criticises it, and rightly so, because she's a smart, educated
woman. For her, that show is really frustrating. Of course the poor
psychiatrist can't give any real advice. I can't believe he hasn't
been killed just for talking to these women. He's bound by this
extraordinarily conventional religious society where he can't
really say anything. But I think for the women even the fact that
they can be heard at all is massive.

Eva Orner's THE NETWORK TrailerAIDY Reviews...

Women have made extraordinary gains in certain parts of the
country, but if you go outside Kabul, [they're] all still wearing
burqas. And a lot of women in Kabul still wear burqas, because they
just don't want to be bothered [by men]. It's tough for women, and
the women in this film are unbelievable. They're so brave and so
smart and defiant. They're just fighting all the time. And what
they've achieved working at TOLO is just extraordinary, because it
gives them the ability to be in charge and to do things. What will
happen to women? That's what gets to me the most.

How optimistic are you about the future of Afghanistan
after your experiences living there and working with the young
Afghans at TOLO?
I'm very cautiously, sort of optimistic. [laughs] That's me not
wanting to sound negative. I am very concerned. I think after 12
years it's still incredibly unstable. The one thing that keeps me
optimistic, again, is that the average age of the country is 24.
That's the hope... They want freedom. They want the ability to
work. They want the ability to become upwardly mobile. It's going
to be up to them to lead the way, and that's what I hope the kids
at TOLO will do. They're the young elite. They're smart; they've
got jobs, and they've got voices. I think they've got the moxie to
do it. It just depends on the violence [they face].

Obviously, there's still a lot of violence in
Afghanistan. Did you ever have any close calls while you were
filming.
Saad had said to me, "everyone has a close call. If you're in
Afghanistan long enough, something's going to happen." Because you
start getting comfortable and used to the constant security, and
you get a little cavalier. He said, "always remember you're in
Afghanistan." I was always aware that at any point you might just
need to run for your life. Sometimes we'd be shooting [the film]
downtown and we'd get a call from the TOLO security team saying,
'there's rumours of a suicide bombing, get off the street now'. I'd
never hesitate. Sometimes we'd think, oh, it's not going to happen.
But if something happened to my driver because I wanted to get a
shot? How would you ever get past that?

We filmed at Ashura, which is a Shia holy day where the men take
to the street and self-flagellate with blades and they're covered
in blood. We were on the street with thousands of people... and
then right after we left and drove off, we heard the big kaboom.
Over 80 people died. The bomb went off pretty much exactly where
we'd been for two hours. We missed it by a couple minutes. It was a
bad day.

You finished filming The Network in
Afghanistan at the end of 2011. Do you have a sense of what's
changed in the country since then?
The country is really gearing up for the impending military
withdrawal… so that's obviously weighing on people's minds. In
terms of TOLO, the biggest thing over the last year has been the
new premiere soccer league, which was a massive success there. I
wasn't there for it, but it's been a massive nation-building,
hero-building phenomenon. The games were televised, and it was like
World Cup soccer fever in Afghanistan. They just won their first international soccer title in the South
Asian Football Federation Championship, where they beat India. It
was three days of partying in Afghanistan. I was talking to people
who were there, and they said that you can't even imagine the
fervour in the country. It's incredibly inspirational and
aspirational, which is part of what TOLO's always been about.
Afghanistan needs heroes, people that kids can look up to.

What about the young people working at TOLO that we got
to know in the film? Have there been any significant changes for
them?
Remember Marina? She was very, very powerful in the film, the
presenter and producer who had her own show in the current affairs
department… After not hearing from Marina for four or five months,
about six months ago I got an email from her. She'd gotten married
to a really educated, lovely man who's an attorney. They're both
patriotic, very proud Afghans who wanted to stay and rebuild their
country, but they felt like they were in danger so they went to the
Netherlands. She'd done some shows that were fairly provocative and
critical of the Taliban and religious fundamentalism, and they were
receiving death threats. They've been in a refugee camp for about
eight months now. When she contacted me, they'd just had their
application for refugee status denied, and she asked if I could
send the film to the judge to back up her story.

Her attorney also said it would help if I could get her story
published, so I interviewed her, and wrote an article for Filmmaker Magazine that was
translated and published in Europe. It's so funny, because Marina
follows me on Facebook and Twitter, where I post all the press
we've gotten. And she just wrote me this lovely letter saying that
after the letter was published in Europe, a human rights attorney
who is very well-regarded in the Netherlands called her and said,
I'll represent you. So that was pretty fantastic